– NASA astronaut candidates are giving a new definition for “flying me to the moon” with their newly revealed class patch.
The 12 spaceflight trainees – 10 from the United States and two from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – underwent two-year basic training in January. Four months later, they received their official nickname, “The Flies”, continuing a tradition that began with NASA’s first class of astronauts in 1959.
On Friday, October 28, Group 23 (“Ascans”) astronaut candidates shared another custom, introducing their own emblem.
“The fly patch represents our class, ‘The Flies’,” Anil Menon, one of the ascans, wrote on Instagram. “Twelve stars represent Class 23 applicants and the flags of the United Arab Emirates and the United States are both displayed.”
Menon’s classmates include NASA recruits Nichole Ayers, Marcos Berríos, Christina Birch, Deniz Burnham, Luke Delaney, Andre Douglas, Jack Hathaway, Christopher Williams, and Jessica Wittner. Nora Al Matrooshi and Mohammad Al Mulla, who were selected by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, joined the class under an agreement between NASA and the United Arab Emirates.
When announced in December 2021, the 12 ascans were described by NASA as new members of the Artemis generation. Under the Artemis program, NASA is working to bring astronauts back to the surface of the Moon to learn the skills needed to send the first humans to Mars.
On the band 23 crest, the NASA astronaut symbol rises upwards from Earth, much like an astronaut in a space suit reaching for the moon, evoking a certain basketball motion.
“And of course, the astronaut pose represents our faith in NASA returning to the moon as a slam dunk while keeping one eye on Mars (the fly’s right eye)!” Menon wrote, captioning an image of the patch.
“So excited that we can finalize this!” answered Birch.
Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, a member of the 1998 “Penguins”, also intervened on Twitter. “Nice patch, flies!”
The tradition of class patches dates back to 1978 and NASA’s Eighth Astronaut Group. The “Thirty-Five New Guys” (TFNG), as they were dubbed, were also the first class to include women and minorities as the US space program prepared to transition from the Apollo era to the Space Shuttle program. .
Guy Bluford, who would become the first African American to fly in space, is credited with the idea. The TFNG patch was designed by space artist Robert McCall, who was at the same time creating the STS-1 mission patch for the first shuttle crew. Both emblems depicted the winged spacecraft soaring into space.
Since then, some NASA classes have had two patches: one with a more formal approach and one highlighting their unflattering nicknames. “The Maggots” (Band 10, 1984), “The Hairballs” (Band 13, 1990), “The Hogs” (Band 14, 1992) and “The Sardines” (Band 16, 1996) both had designs.
More recently, the tradition has also been adopted by the Russian Cosmonaut Corps and European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts with the introduction of their own class crests.
Historically, crests were only produced for members of the class. The Group 22 (2017) “The Turtles” patch became the first to be sold directly to the public when it was listed by AB Emblem, NASA’s official patch supplier, in September.
The “The Flies” patch has only been seen as a work of art yet.
Since their selection, Group 23 Ascans have completed flight training with the Navy, land survival courses with the Army, spacesuit training and spacewalks at the Neutral Buoyancy Facility in NASA and field training in geology in New Mexico. The class was also present for the first launch attempts of the Artemis I uncrewed mission, NASA’s first major step toward sending astronauts to the Moon.
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